Pages

Stat Counter

Translate

Search This Blog

About Me

Welcome!
To me, there is nothing more precious than our family.
We are all connected in some way, like the branches of a tree. This site explores those branches, sharing family stories and information - both known and yet to be discovered - so we can meet the people behind the names and gain insights into our own lives. If you have questions or wish to share your own memories or photo about a family on this site, please leave a comment, or contact me.

Saturday, February 11, 2012

As I send you my greetings together with all the
well-deserved attentions to you and your kind family, I want to send you my
deepest sympathies on the death of the Child Gilberto, and you must not believe
that it was caused by a Cold, but by the bump he had on his head, which sooner
or later would have a sad ending. It
happened…there is nothing you can do but have patience. Now do not give in to the Pain; but Look at
this news with some calm, understanding that it is better to grieve over the dead rather than wish them alive again; as I did, for I
have spent my life in tears wishing they were alive.
The conjugal bond offers us flowers and pleasures…but the cross of
marriage, offers us a world of woes. No
matter how much a family may possess, all must go through that world of
woes…but all you can do is have a big soul, a Heart that neither denies the
truth nor gives in to tears but Sees that this is part of life. Calm, my friend, calm, do not give in and do
not carry this burden around with you.
Give my kisses to all the children.
Your friend who esteems you,

Enrique Huesca

At left, the original letter (in Spanish) from Enrique Huesca to Catalina (Perrotin) Huesca, 1915

Gilberto was about two years old when he died. The exact cause of death is unclear; many of the civil records of the village of Tierra Blanca from 1915 were burned in a fire, and most of those who might have known the details have gone on to their heavenly reward.

Maybe he fell or suffered a blow to the head while playing
or pulling down some heavy object from above.
Maybe he had a tumor of some sort.
We may never know, but we can only imagine the grief Catalina felt at
losing her sweet little boy. Enrique, as
he was known, gently tells his daughter-in-law that she must not believe that
her toddler died of a cold and adds that “sooner or later” the lump would have
a sad ending. In what must have been
nearly unbearable for Catalina to conceive, he goes on to reassure her that the
child’s fate might have been worse had he lived.

His words today might sound terribly fatalistic, but they
came during a trying period in Mexico.
The country was in the throes of a revolution, and Tierra Blanca and
surrounding areas not only experienced the heavy casualties of that conflict
but also lost many people, young and old, to outbreaks of measles, diptheria,
and smallpox.

It would have been easy for a young 21-year-old mother to
“give in to the pain” of losing her child when she was scarcely an adult
herself. But her father-in-law’s words
must have given her the strength she needed to go on and care for her husband
Cayetano and their three children, Enrique, Eduardo, and Victoria, even as she
was in the first trimester of yet another pregnancy. Like many of the women of her time, Catalina
would prove to be strong and resilient.
She and Cayetano would have 17 children in all, 11 of whom survived into
adulthood.

Catalina and Cayetano Huesca and sons (left to right) Gilberto, Eduardo, and Enrique,in front of their home, Orizaba, 1913.

Enrique’s letter hints at his own trials and
tribulations. We know little about him
except that he was born between 1847 and 1850 in Puebla, Mexico, to Jose
Calletano de la Trinidad Huesca and Josefa Rodriguez. A devout Catholic, he followed in the family
trade as a carpenter, crafting interior furnishings for the cathedral and
churches of Puebla, a city known for having as many churches as there are days in
a year. He taught his children to do
good for others but to keep their acts to themselves, often reminding them to
“never let the right hand know what the left hand is doing.” This was a refrain that his children and
their children would carry with them all their lives.

Born at the end of Mexico’s civil reform war, Enrique lived
through some of the most turbulent eras of his country’s history. Before he had even reached his teen years, he
undoubtedly witnessed the Battle of Puebla between the French and Mexican
armies. He would have rejoiced wildly
with his family at the Mexican victory on May 5, 1862, only to be devastated
barely a year later when the French regrouped and defeated the Mexicans in a
second battle at Puebla and went on to topple and replace the Mexican
government with what Napoleon III referred to as his “Mexican Empire.” He and his parents would have discussed the
resurgence of the deposed Mexican president, Benito Juarez, who with the
backing of President Abraham Lincoln, reclaimed his government and had the
puppet Emperor Maximilian Hapsburg executed by firing squad in 1867.

The uncertainty of the times and their severe impact on the
nation would continue for many years as subsequent regimes rose and fell one
after the other, culminating in the Revolution of 1910 and indelibly scarring
the psyche of the Mexican people with the ironic realization that the only
constancy in their lives was that - save
their faith in God and their love for
one another - nothing, including happiness, could either be certain or last
forever.